


The Principal Element of Creation

by GStK



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 00:32:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9048173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GStK/pseuds/GStK
Summary: Most people believe the mind to be a mirror.(Maribel, Renko, and the way reality bends.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BlackCats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackCats/gifts).



> First-person PoV. Playing fast and loose with canon.   
> Post-Dateless Bar.

I think of you as the better half of science.

You push me, you do, into all sorts of schemes. To you, fantasy and faith and experimentation are the same. You are always there and you always believe me, even in the things I don’t show you.

But then, you believe nearly everything.

‘Mount Miwa today?’ you ask – no, insist – but I shake my head at you, the pen in my hand stilling. There’s demons in my eyes and an underwater landscape turned upside down in my head. The water is air and the ground is the sea. I’m trying to figure out a way to tell you, and at the same time, I’m not.

‘Only if you write it,’ I reply. Other people’s experiences mean nothing to us: they are fodder, they are data to be mined, and in the end, the bar visit meant nothing. But, stories – you want them, I have them, and somewhere in between we agree. ‘My hand hurts.’

‘Merry,’ you say, like you’re disappointed. I blink and look at you and suddenly we aren’t where we’re supposed to be, any more. I stare in fascination while reality struggles to make your hat and your brows make sense. They stop pinching together in frustration, but travel higher, coasting to your forehead.

‘Merry?’ you repeat, like I haven’t been listening for a long time.

I glance around and no I haven’t. The walls are gone and replaced with rotting wood. The auto-light at my desk never existed; the sun filters in through holes and gaps in the musty windows.

A building, an old Catholic church just a kilometre from Mount Miwa. Reality locks back in place for a moment to let me remember that. It crumbles apart when I see the tails of _youkai_ dancing around the corner.

‘Earth to Dr. Latency,’ you mutter, tapping my head, taking my hand, smiling at your own joke. Your fingers in mine are never-never-not-ever an attempt to keep me grounded. You hope, with a grip on me, that you can be whisked away to other worlds like I am. You’re waiting for that moment when tripping on a rock on the Moon will hurt you.

I tell you, ‘I’m here.’ I say it again to myself to reaffirm it, and take a careful step out to test my footing. There’s a shake in the floor when I do, but it’s not my weight; it’s the aftershock of an earthquake, or maybe the world going into labour. Birthing new islands for us to explore. Snatching up old ones and trading them to another universe.

You surmise, quietly, with an eye turned to the starry-sunny sky: ‘We probably won’t find any hair-worshippers here… or God worshippers. I thought there’d be more to this place, but this whole village has been a bust.’

But then you look at me, like daring me to prove you wrong. I love you, you know; maybe you want it, but I don’t. I don’t want to see scratches on your cheek. I don’t want to catch bite marks in your arm, because you would always, just barely escape.

Except, you remind me. ‘I’m here,’ you say firmly. ‘You’re here too. And _I’m_ not going anywhere else without you. In this world or any of the others, you know? There’d be no point.’ Your crooked smile cracks a little with another aftershock, and I watch dust fall from the ceiling to decorate the brim of your cap. ‘We’re the Secret Sealing Club. We won’t ever sign a fanzine with that, but, ah… that’s what we are.’

I admire your confidence, and the way it doesn’t split across quantum layers until you’re barely a person any more. You stay whole, no matter what worlds I show you. You continue to exist, and you teach me the things I’ve seen are not Hell or demons – just things, just fragments of the Izanagi Plate.

You grin at me and pull me close and I think, distantly, about the homework I didn’t complete. Even now.

‘Are you going to kiss me during an earthquake?’ I question, and you’re all too eager to reply.

‘That was an hour ago.’ The initial quake, maybe; you read my face and wipe off the brim of your hat. ‘An hour and twenty-seven minutes ago. And after this, we’re going to the shore to see if any more fragments washed up.’

‘I think the scientific world has had enough of the tectonic plates.’

Except, you kiss me, and you won’t take no for an answer. I like that about you. It grounds me when nothing else might. ‘”Everything used to be something else,”’ you say. ‘That’s something you’d agree with, right? Subjectivity.’

I make a face but kiss you back, and then I smile. You’re very charming. ‘Not at all. Actually, I’m thinking more and more about eternalism these days.’

‘The past and present as one? Block time? We should write about that in the next edition!’

So you say, and you pull me along, off on another adventure.

I look back and see the glowing tails of _youkai_ sway and vanish as the layers compress.

I look forward and I see you, and you do not disappear, and our hands do not disconnect.

Dr. Latency and his wife, The Better Half of Science. You twist the truth and in doing so, make a new reality.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary adapted from quotes by Rabindranath Tagore.


End file.
